10/06/2009 (8:02 pm)

Well, since I’m starting to get in to paintball I will be doing reviews on products which I purchase and posting them here.

This is my first review regarding paintball. It is a review of my Save Phace Lazarus paintball mask.

Update:

I received a call from Save Phace. They stated that the smoke lens that I had bought is the old design and that the new ones have the moon shaped slot. They are going to send me a new smoke lens as well as some new anchors free of charge. I am very impressed with the prompt response of their customer service. I am also glad that they were willing to replace both the old style lens and the anchors. I will definitely do business with them directly in the future.

I ordered the mask from www.actionvillage.com. My dealing with them was relatively pleasant. They did have an issue with the fact that I was having the mask shipped to my work which was not a listed address for my credit card. I ended up having to call my credit card company and have the address added as a second address. After I did this the transaction went smoothly. I had the item shipped via UPS, which I will never do again (it was quite the learning experience). When the mask arrived I found that I had to pay $53 in taxes and brokerage fees. The mask was only $99.99 so the GST owed on the mask would have been about $5. This means that I paid $48 in brokerage fees on an item which was marked under $100. Had I shipped it via USPS the brokerage fee would have been a flat rate of $5 (or $8 for expedited).

In any case, moving on to the mask (this will be part 1 of a 2 part review as I have not yet been able to use the mask on the paintball field)…

Here is a photo of the mask with the clear lens that it came with:

Here is an image of the mask with the smoke thermal lens that I bought for it:

As I mentioned earlier I haven’t been able to use the mask to play paintball yet. This is because I ran in to an issue with installing the smoke thermal lens that I bought.

To explain the issue that I ran in to, first, here is a photo of the anchor slot of the clear lens which came with the mask:

Here is a photo of the anchor slot for the smoke thermal lens:

Notice the difference in the 2 slots. The smoke lens sticks out at the back instead of being rounded off like the clear lens.

This is what the lens anchor looks like:

Here is what the back of the anchor looks like:

Notice how it is moon shaped with a slot in it. Now on the clear lens where the back is rounded off, it went in without a problem:

On the smoke lens, no matter how hard I pushed the lens in to the mask I could not get the anchor to slip in. This is because the part that sticks out from the back of the slot of the smoke lens gets lodged in the anchor’s slot and prevents the anchor from being pushed in any further. I could get the anchor to go in fine on one side of the lens, since I could push that side in far enough to get the anchor through (and there was no pressure on the anchor from the lens), but I could never get the other side pushed in far enough (once the other side was anchored) to actually get the achor to slip in. After several attempts the anchor eventually broke while I was trying to pull it out, as the lens was stuck in the anchor slot. It came out the first few times without breaking but I suppose that the repeated attempts were too much for it.

Broken anchor:

The mask did not come with any spare anchors or anchor keys so I’ll be contacting save phace to get some replacements (and hopefully tips on installing this lens).

Once I manage to get the thermal lens installed I’ll be doing part 2 of this review.